discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Laura Michaels <lmemsm AT yahoo.com>]

Was reading through the various file types listed at
the Creative Commons web site that support metadata
regarding copyright/cc related details.  I have a
format to add to the list.  ABC is a format that can
be used to easily exchange music.  ABC notation is
ASCII text, so you can share songs by e-mail, over the
web, etc.  There are also tools available to convert
ABC notation to MIDI file format or to create
postscript sheet music, among other functions.  One of
the first things I checked into when I decided to
start writing notes using ABC was how it handled
copyright related material (basically metadata).  In
the latest ABC specifications, there's a
%%abc-copyright tag that can be used to store
copyright or cc related information.  With the
gracious consent of the abcmidi maintainer, I added
some code to abc2midi (the abc to midi conversion
utility), so that it would embed certain information
from the %%abc-copyright tag into the midi file it
creates.  At the time, I used it to embed information
about releasing music under the Free Music Public
License (FMPL) (http://www.fmpl.org/fmpl.html), but
there's no reason it can't be used for cc information
as well.  I have read that some countries don't
recognize (c) as a valid copyright tag, so abc2midi
will also let you enter an ASCII copyright symbol by
using the code \xA9.  Basically, abc2midi's
abc-copyright tag currently follows the C language's
style of character conversion.  \n, \t, \r are
recognized as linefeed, tab and carriage return.  \\
represents a single \. \x followed by some numbers (or
A-F) represents a hex number.  Therefore, \xA9 is
recognized as the hex ASCII character represented by
A9, thus putting that character into the midi file. 
(A bit complicated, but if you're familiar with C it
should make sense.)  Anyway, I thought I'd make
mention of abc2midi's abilities for those interested
in writing their own music.  ABC notation and abc2midi
are a wonderful way for those of us who can read/write
music but can't play an instrument to be able to
create our own music.  You can find abc2midi as part
of the abcmidi package at:
http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/
There's also more information about ABC notation in
general at that site.



        
                
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